I have racial prejudice.In a freshman-year psychology course, I took a computerized test a headshot or a word was flashed on the screen, and I pushed a button if the person was white or if the word was positive. I pushed a different button in response to black faces or negative words.
But then the program switched up on me. Now I had to push one button for white faces or negative words, and another for black faces and positive words.
Like 87.9 percent of white American participants, I performed faster and with greater accuracy when asked to pair "white" with "good" and "black" with "bad." When I showed up at African American Student Affairs (the "Black House") to attend the 6 p.m. Tuesday lecture "Modern Day Racial Prejudice: Subtle Yet Destructive," I didn't expect to be reminded of these results. I'm not particularly proud of them.
But the Implicit Association Test was the topic of associate psychology professor Jennifer A. Richeson's lecture. Richeson is also a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research.
After an introduction by AASA director Shawna Cooper-Gibson, this year's Evening Dialogue series began. Richeson advanced the thesis that racial prejudice is still alive, though implicit, in our society. At the center of her evidence was the IAT, along with research showing the amygdala (the part of the brain controlling emotions like fear) activates strongly in white people when they see pictures of blacks.
"This is going on inside people's heads," she said. "People who take this test are not people who think they're biased."
In fact, a colleague of Richeson's, identified only as a white-male academic who studies prejudice and has the initials "B.N.," took 16 seconds to complete the test when "black" was paired with "good," compared to 12 seconds when "white" was.
Interestingly, black participants as a group did not show bias in either direction. Nearly half of them showed a pro-white tendency (they could connect "white" and "good" more easily), and the bell-shaped results curve came to an apex at zero bias.
"It's not surprising that some black people who took the test had a pro-white bias," said Todd Johnson, a Medill sophomore. "It's so ingrained in history and everyday life that it's old hat at this point."
The scientific research was straightforward, but I was a bit troubled when Richeson's media bias presentation used a debunked example. She showed two Associated Press photos of Katrina victims carrying food; one caption said the victims "found" the food, while the other used the word "looted." Of course, the white people were the "finders."
The only problem was that the captions were accurate. The "finders" who happened to be white got the food while it was drifting in the streets. A local grocery store had flooded, and the items would have gone to waste anyhow. The "looters" had gone into a store to take the food. Check out www.snopes.com for a good summary from various media sources.
To be fair, Richeson did a good job of paying homage to past progress, and she recognized the sincere belief of most whites that they are not themselves prejudiced. Her views are not radical.
"We're here in honor of Martin Luther King Day, and we can have a sense of pride about where we are. Certainly, we have achieved a lot," she said as an opening salvo. "Many of us would not be in the Northwestern community if not for what came before us."
She also advised attendees to avoid calling others "racist."
"It's just not a useful term, and it gets you nowhere. It's just hurtful," Richeson said. "Before you start judging people and putting people down you're a racist' start thinking of the things that you might be."
Even when it came to media bias, her recommendations were commonsensical if her evidence was faulty. When research subjects see photos of positive black people (Oprah, for example) and negative whites (Charles Manson) before taking the test, their bias disappears.
"Part of it is reconnecting white' and bad,'" Richeson said. "The media should remind people that life is complicated, and there are white criminals too."
Education junior Lauren Walker agreed that even news broadcasts can confirm stereotypes.
"On the nightly news, when there's a crime, chances are there's a racial minority involved. You only match crimes to African Americans," she said. "I'm not sure what the media can do about it, but they need to take more responsibility for images that reinforce stereotypes."
Walking away from the event, Johnson said IAT research only confirms what he already knew.
"It's further proof of what you hear a million times, that racism is more subtle now," he said. "In the 60s you had water hoses and videotapes of politicians giving racist speeches as explicit proof. Now it's harder to have proof, but this is like a 2005 or 2006 version an online test that shows prejudice."
As much as some whites and especially conservatives like to rail on groups like AASA for racial exclusivity, I have to admit the experience was a positive one. Regardless of one's political views, frank dialogue about racial issues is important for the future of Northwestern and of America.
Maybe the problem isn't so much that black students form groups and put on presentations, but that very few whites bother to attend and engage in debate. Of the roughly 25 attendees, I was one of only a few Caucasians.
But dealing more directly with the speech itself, I came away wishing Richeson had delved into a few of the deeper issues. I should note that the meeting room was signed out to a different group immediately afterwards.
For one thing, her solutions were a bit inadequate. Reconnecting "white" and "bad" is probably a step in the right direction (though I personally hate plenty of white people already), but even Jesse Jackson and Chris Rock have commented that if someone follows them late at night, they're relieved to see white skin. A fear of black criminality is, statistically, not an irrational one.
But that's no excuse for flat-out associating "black" with "bad." Such an association is unfair to the millions of blacks like black Northwestern students who act admirably in everyday life. Richeson would be better off acknowledging this nuance than operating on the apparent assumption that if it weren't for "prejudice," people wouldn't notice any differences between races.
Additionally, I was drawn back to the subtitle of the lecture, "Subtle Yet Destructive." The research certainly proves subtlety, as it takes a professionally-designed psychological test to unearth today's bias, but Richeson didn't address how it was destructive.
Today's black community is plagued by a whole host of problems, whatever their causes, ranging from crime (where both offenders and victims tend to be black) to illegitimacy to attitudes that education is "acting white." Conservative commentator Shelby Steele has argued that white racism is a ways down the ladder from some of these factors.
Just ask yourself: If you could either end gang violence or stop white prejudice, which would you do? During the presentation it was assumed, probably correctly, that implicit biases can hurt interactions between whites and blacks, but no one took a step back to treat prejudice as part of a larger problem.
But no argument can touch the core of Richeson's thesis. Today's whites do harbor biases they unfairly apply to innocent blacks. Even conservatives can embrace this statement without denigrating personal responsibility or laissez-faire ideals.
"None of us are in the Klan, but none of us are Jesus, either," Richeson said.
